Category: dam

During worship service this morning at my local church, I shared some thoughts that I felt eager to share with the church body during “shares” after the worship music:

I shared that I’ve been interested in the recent news in Oroville, California…

… and been following up on it. I felt that their is a lot of symbolism with “man-made” dams that have been constructed around the world with our “spiritual” walk. The dams can be a symbolism of “lies” (e.g. “Your not good enough” , You are a loser”, etc..)that has been spoken to each of us in various ways that hinder us to receive more what God can do through us.

Before writing this, I was reminded of this “old-school” worship song..

I feel that we need to let God destroy that “spiritual dam” in our personal lives in order for His “Holy Spirit” to move in us mightier as His children.

What are you currently personally “struggling” with? Do you trust that God will get your through it? I then shared one of the songs that was sung during worship on “I’m NO longer a slave to fear..”, which I shared last year at church that we can substitute “fear” with whatever (e.g. sin, depression, alcohol, deception…

After my share, the guest speakers (Dennis & Zoe) from Pillager, MN shared about their recent trip to the Philippines. This family duo modeled how God can use us . They went to the Philippines to minister to the people there in different barangays/villages in various ways (e.g. healing, words of knowedledge, encouragement, etc..) This was such an encouragement for all of that we don’t have to depend on “ministers” or “church leaders” to do God’s work. We all can be used by Him to bring the taste of God’s kingdom on earth.

Hope and pray this will touch you and may God use each of us mightily in these days and please pray for the people of Oroville and the communities in the valley downstream of the #Orovillespillway or #Orovilledam. Feel free to share your thoughts, prayer requests, etc..

California flooding has exposed gold veins hidden for 200 years
By Michael Harthorne Published March 14, 2017 Newser foxnews.com“..According to CBS San Francisco, the floods also swept gold out of abandoned mines and washed it downriver. While KCRA reports that gold can simply be picked off the ground following major flooding, the best prospecting will come in the summer months when the water has receded….

Right now, rivers are still high and government workers are trying to keep would-be prospectors away while they get things under control. But in the summer—which experts say could be the busiest since the one that followed major flooding in 1997—stream beds will be exposed for better gold hunting.

“I’m going to have a ball,” one prospector tells the Chico newspaper. The epicenter for the new gold rush could be the Oroville Dam, which nearly catastrophically flooded this winter and required the use of an emergency spillway for the first time…”

“..Oroville – Something was wrong with the Oroville Dam spillway weeks before the Department of Water Resources noticed a hole in the concrete.

Two photos taken by photographers from this newspaper show discoloration and possible damage to the concrete of the spillway at the spot where a gaping hole opened Feb. 7. Those pictures were taken Jan. 13 and Jan. 27.

When asked for a response to the photos, California Natural Resources Agency deputy secretary for communication Nancy Vogel wrote in an email to this newspaper, “Oroville dam was frequently inspected by multiple state and federal agencies. Reports of those inspections did not reveal any major causes for concern. DWR will soon name a panel of independent experts to investigate the cause of the main spillway failure and ascertain if such a failure could occur again. We hope that what we learn about the cause of this incident and how to prevent it elsewhere will help dam owners around the world.”..”

Potentially catastrophic problems with both the primary and emergency spillways at the Oroville Dam appear to have been caused by flaws that either had shown up in inspections or were flagged to state and federal officials going back more than a decade, an expert in infrastructure failures said Monday.

The cratering of the main spillway — which spiraled into the current crisis in Butte County — occurred in a spot where cracks and other defects had been found repeatedly since 2009, said Robert Bea, a professor emeritus and engineering expert at UC Berkeley.

But the defects do not appear to have been adequately repaired or resolved by the state Department of Water Resources, which runs the dam, and the faulty work probably resulted in the fissure that opened up last week on the 1,730-foot-long spillway, Bea said.

“My God, we had evidence that there was trouble going back to 2008, 2009,” said Bea, who at The Chronicle’s request reviewed 14 dam inspections from 2008 to 2016 conducted by the Division of Safety of Dams, which is part of the Department of Water Resources.”

The state Department of Water Resources has, as promised, halted flows down the damaged main spillway at Oroville Dam. Even if you’ve been following the progress of this incident since it began Feb. 7, and even if you understood the damage to the spillway was catastrophic, the first images of the structure are sobering.

DWR stopped the release of water down the spillway early Monday afternoon with two main goals in mind.

First, it wants contractors to begin the task of removing a staggering amount of rubble, rock and sediment that have wound up at the bottom of the river channel below the spillway. Clearing the debris, in turn, will allow dam managers to resume operations at the hydroelectric power plant at the base of the dam, a facility that was shut down as water rose behind the blockage in the channel.
“

-Sunday,February 26th 2017

Oroville Dam’s banged-up spillway to shut down Monday
By Dale Kasler dkasler@sacbee.com February 26, 2017 2:21 PM sacbee.com“As seen from the air and ground level, the gaping hole in the spillway was first photographed by The Bee on Feb. 8, the same day that inspectors were sent via tether down into the hole. Water was released later that same day. Since then, we have documented the erosion caused by the force of water. Produced by Sue Morrow The Sacramento Bee

Oroville Dam operators plan to halt water releases from the dam’s battered spillway Monday in order to ramp up efforts to remove a debris pile that’s preventing them from restarting a hydroelectric plant.

It will mark the first time since Feb. 7, when a giant crater opened in the concrete spillway, that no water has been released from Lake Oroville.

The state Department of Water Resources announced Sunday that with water levels at Lake Oroville reduced to 842 feet, and inflows at a modest 25,000 cubic feet per second, dam operators are confident that shutting off the outflows from the spillway makes sense.

The spillway has been releasing water the past few days at 50,000 cfs. DWR said it will begin dialing back the flows at 6:45 a.m. Monday, bringing the releases to a halt by sometime in the afternoon. DWR said it plans to keep the outflows at zero “for several days.”

Dam operators have been moving in equipment to a water channel beneath the spillway in order to remove the pile of mud, concrete and other debris that’s accumulated since the crater developed Feb. 7. The pile is backing water up into the dam’s hydro plant, making it impossible to restart.

When operational, the hydro plant can release water at 14,000 cfs, “which will allow DWR to better manage reservoir levels through the remaining spring runoff season,” the agency said.

Dam operators shut off the spillway for about a day after the crater was spotted. They resumed outflows, but as a giant storm swelled lake levels, water flowed over the emergency spillway on Feb. 11 for the first time in the reservoir’s 48-year history. A day later, after severe erosion was spotted on the unlined hillside and dam operators feared the emergency spillway would fail, 188,000 downstream residents were evacuated.

By accelerating flows from the damaged main spillway, DWR was able to reduce lake levels, halt the flows over the emergency spillway and arrest the erosion. Since then the lake has fallen to 842 feet – 59 feet below the top of the emergency spillway.

See this amazing photo of the Oroville Dam from space By Michelle Robertson, San Francisco Chronicle Updated 7:53 am, Saturday, February 25, 2017 sfgate.com“…International Space Station crew member Sergey Ryzhikov snapped the above photo of Lake Oroville and the Oroville Dam on February 22. The high water levels and emergency spillway were evident from his perch hundreds of miles above the earth.
..”

Storm-lashed California roads, dams could cost $1B to fix SCOTT SMITH,Associated Press 18 hours ago (Sat. Feb 25th 2017) yahoo.com“….The total cost for responding to flooding, storm damage and repairs statewide in the first two months of 2017 will probably exceed $1 billion, Gov. Jerry Brown’s finance director, Michael Cohen, said Friday. Much of it will be covered by the federal government, which is helping the state recover from severe storms, he said..”

-Friday, February 25th 2017

Water levels at Lake Oroville inching down; US Sen. Kamala Harris tours dam By Andre Byik, Chico Enterprise-Record | PUBLISHED: February 24, 2017 at 11:24 am | UPDATED: February 24, 2017 at 11:46 am mercurynews.com“…As of 4 p.m. Thursday, the water level was at the 850.58-foot elevation, more than 50 feet below the problematic emergency spillway’s lip….
A new storm is scheduled to arrive Saturday night, but the National Weather Service has scaled back its estimate of how strong it will be. It is now expected to bring as much as a quarter-inch of rain on the valley floor and a half-inch in the foothills.

For comparison, according to DWR the Feb. 16-21 storm system dumped 10 inches at Brush Creek, in the foothills above Lake Oroville.
..”

“…In Oroville, where heavy rains recently damaged the reservoir spillway and forced the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people, officials say waters are receding behind the dam, and the reservoir is at 81 percent capacity with room for incoming runoff…”

“..Another potent atmospheric river event has set up in northern California, once again raising the risk of dangerous flooding, landslides and damaging winds in this storm-weary region. Several additional feet of snow will also pile up in the higher terrain of the Sierra Nevada…

Flood warnings continue for all of the Sacramento Valley, including Sacramento, Oroville and Redding. Flooding is likely, due to already-saturated soils and very swollen rivers and lakes….”

First is Ground footage from Friday.
then with fresh Drone footage in the rain from Saturday. (great progress on the emergency spillway repairs)
Finishing with close-up footage of the Main spillway, from 2-19, with reduced waterflow, now at 55,000cfs.
Next is”EXPERTS BELIEVE THE OROVILLE DAM WILL FAIL GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN, from youtube.com“Published on Feb 19, 2017

EXPERTS BELIEVE THE OROVILLE DAM WILL FAIL-GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN

Category
News & Politics
Licen..”
*National Guard was sent to help evacuate people from Oroville to Merced IF dam goes out…Governor spent $ that was supposed to be used for dam repairs on illegal immigrant issue

Viktor Schauberger, “The Water Wizard”, Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list&#8230; Viktor Schauberger has been proved right again and again. He warned the quackademics of this time repeatedly about this kind of disaster and explained to them in great detail how they were doing everything backwards in relationship to moving water. He screamed at the top of his lungs at quackademics for their failed straight channels, straight pipes, straight tubes and flat head thinking! He demonstrated the enormous power of water vortices with decades of research and the building of a Log Flume in Austria which all of the academic quacks claimed would fail. He proved them all wrong as usual!. The very vortices he was teaching about, ate up the spillway, since the water was moved incorrectly down a straight channeled spillway, with flat sides and flat bottoms. The spillway experienced massive cavitation at exactly the point where it would be expected to fail, just below the hump in the spillway where the water was accelerated faster that the slope before it. The cavitation sucked the concrete off the face of the spillway like butter with the enormous vacuum created. The Glenn Canyon Dam, Spillway Disaster of 1983 showed egghead, quakademic engineers the failure of their designs using straight paths for the conduction of water..”

Oroville Dam, atmospheric river
The water level at Lake Oroville continued to drop Thursday, but state officials began reducing the outflow from Oroville Dam’s damaged main spillway in an effort to clear debris from the Feather River below, even as a major storm was forecast for early next week.”

Shieena Living Waters
Published on Feb 15, 2017Oroville Dam: A race to brace spillway for storms arriving tonight By Phillip Reese and Ryan Lillis preese@sacbee.com
sacbee.com “..Crews worked through the night to shore up the emergency spillway at troubled Oroville Dam, racing to fortify the structure before a series of storms arrive Wednesday night.

Three storm systems will hit Northern California during the next six days, according to the National Weather Service. The first system will drop about an inch of rain in Oroville between 10 p.m. Wednesday and 4 p.m. Thursday. Greater amounts of precipitation will fall in the mountains northeast of Lake Oroville.

Forecasters are confident that the first two storm systems will not cause huge inflows into Lake Oroville. They are less confident about the third system, which is due around Tuesday. That storm could be bigger and warmer, meaning more rain and snowmelt streaming into Lake Oroville.

“You’re putting rocks in a hole. Then you’re putting slurry in to solidify it,” said Chris Orrock, spokesman for the Department of Water Resources. “When water comes down, it will hit that patch and roll off.” ..”

OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Officials have ordered residents near one of the nation’s biggest dams to evacuate the area, saying a “hazardous situation is developing” after an emergency spillway severely eroded.

State officials are inspecting an erosion scar on the potentially hazardous emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam. Nearly 200,000 people living in the area have been evacuated.

nexpected erosion chewed through the main spillway earlier this week, sending chunks of concrete flying and creating a 200-foot-long, 30-foot-deep hole that continues growing. Engineers don’t know what caused the cave-in, but Chris Orrock, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources, said it appears the dam’s main spillway has stopped crumbling even though it’s being used for water releases.

About 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, Lake Oroville is one of California’s largest man-made lakes, and the 770-foot-tall Oroville Dam is the nation’s tallest. The lake is a central piece of California’s government-run water delivery network, supplying water for agriculture in the Central Valley and residents and businesses in Southern California.”Tons Of Rocks Bolster Failing Oroville Dam Spillway
February 13, 2017 9:30 AM sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com“OROVILLE (CBS SF) – A fleet of state and National Guard helicopters were preparing to dump tons of rocks on an eroding spillway at the Oroville Dam Monday, carrying with them the hopes of more than 188,000 evacuees who fled in panic when a collapse appeared to be imminent.

Meanwhile, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the evacuation order would stay in place until officials were certain the returning residents would be safe.”…

Oroville Dam Spillway Failure: Watch Live Stream Online Published 9:37 pm EST, February 12, 2017 Updated 10:40 pm EST, February 12, 2017 heavy.com“…The Butte County Sheriff’s Department ordered the immediate evacuation of residents in Oroville, California on February 12. Those who live downstream or in low levels by the Oroville Dam were ordered to evacuate Sunday night due to the emergency spillway’s “imminent” failure…”

The California Government assured the citizens that the emergency spillway would not be used in the lake overflow as Oroville Dam’s concrete spillway collapsed due to structural failure at 65,000 CFS release. Now with the lower hydroelectric facility discharge out flow clogged with debris there will be +12,000 CFS flow over top and also authorities will scale back flow from collapsed spillway to 35,000 CFS from 55,000 CFS which means and extra 32,000 CFS will pour over the untested emergency spillway.

THOSE IN THE DRAINAGE BASIN OF THIS DAM NEED TO PREPARE TO POSSIBLY EVACUATE. IF THE ORDER IS GIVEN YOU WILL HAVE LESS THAN 30 MINUTES TO LEAVE. PREPARE NOW.

Water has begun to slowly flow over the Oroville Dam emergency spillway Saturday morning as Lake Oroville has reached full capacity and water outflows by way of the damaged spillway have decreased.

Although inflows decreased Friday and into Saturday morning to 89,000 cubic feet per second, water officials have also decreased outflows to 55,100 cfs, according to KCRA chief meteorologist Mark Finan.

This is the first time the uncontrolled emergency spillway has been used in the dam’s 48-year history.

KCRA-TV
Water officials went back and forth since discovering the erosion hole Tuesday morning on the normal spillway as to whether the lake would reach levels that would allow the emergency spillway to be used.

At noon Friday, California Department of Water Resources officials believed it was less likely that the emergency spillway would be used, based on the amount of water that was being let out in comparison to how much was coming in. But by Friday night, they anticipated it would again need to be used as officials cut back the outflows through the damaged spillway.

Crews began working Wednesday to clear out trees and vegetation below the uncontrolled spillway to reduce the amount of debris that flows into the Feather River.

There are no flood concerns or concerns for the structural integrity of the Oroville Dam.

The total flow of water from the reservoir is expected to be half of what the river can handle and is consistent with releases made at this time of year, the DWR said.

“While DWR does not expect flows to exceed downstream channel carrying capacity,
the rate of flow into the ungated emergency spillway may change quickly,” the department said in a released statement Saturday morning.”

The Oroville Dam in California finds itself in a situation with the only way to avert an over top of the dam is using an untested emergency spill way built in the 1960’s as the regular spillway was damaged by a sinkhole and has stopped drainage of the lake. Evacuations are not issued yet, but with more rain on the way this dam will over top into the emergency earth 1960’s drain way. Good Luck to all of you. You may need to evacuate, Please prepare in Advance.

“…These three graphs show key California reservoir conditions and river stages for the upper and lower Sacramento Valley for Tuesday, February 21, 2017. The images are from the California Department of Water Resources’ Data Exchange Center and the National Weather Service…” Northern California braces for flooding; Don Pedro spillway opened February 20th 2017 @3pm Louis Sahagun and Esmeralda BermudezContact Reporters latimes.com

“….Many parts of the region — especially in the San Joaquin and Sacramento River valleys and Sierra Nevada — are on track to have the wettest winter on record. Numerous reservoirs are close to capacity and streams and rivers are primed for flooding. ..

The area will be under a flood watch Monday and Tuesday, when the new storm is forecast to dump as much as 10 inches of rain on the Feather River Basin. The National Weather Service also warned that the storm is expected to be packing strong winds that could hurl waves in the reservoir toward the 770-foot-tall dam….”2 more Northern California reservoirs at or near capacity
By Nanette Asimov, San Francisco Chronicle Updated 9:35 pm, Friday, February 17, 2017 sfgate.com“..The threat of major flooding in Oroville has subsided, but Northern California’s energetic rains are filling other lakes and reservoirs to capacity.

In Napa County, Lake Berryessa is full but poses no threat of the kind in Oroville last weekend. There, fears of a catastrophic flood from the potential failure of the Oroville Dam spillways sent nearly 200,000 people fleeing.

By contrast, the man-made Lake Berryessa has an unusual overflow mechanism that sends water down a center tube, like a bathtub drain, rather than up and out. That drain hasn’t been called into duty since 2006 — until now, water officials say.

In Stanislaus County, where the Don Pedro Reservoir is forecast to reach capacity by Tuesday, authorities are warning residents along the Tuolumne River 45 miles away in Modesto to consider evacuating voluntarily until the flood danger is past.

“We have a team of deputies going out warning people about localized flooding,” said Lt. Mike Parker of the county Sheriff’s Department, adding that up to 200 people are most at risk.

Officials say they would send water through Don Pedro’s overflow spillway if the lake level hits 830 feet, a height it’s expected to reach in the next several days. ..”

Excess rain water threatens Anderson Reservoir dam in South Bay
KGO – San Francisco 23 hours ago (Saturday, February 11th 2017)yahoo.com“.. Rain has brought too much of a good thing to Santa Clara Valley’s biggest reservoir in Morgan Hill. The Anderson Reservoir is at 91 percent capacity after rain swept through the Bay Area. “